hallucination

A new bot server is on the way. Among the gains will be that the stats website will return. I hope to have the work completed before the weekend so that league matches can occur. --hallu

It's now easier for squads to qualify for the Reset Winners! Now you only need 3 members to each get 20 kills to be in the running! Here is the announcement from the hallucitron: ========= New! Reset Winner criteria for squad members is now only 20 kills! You need 3 squad members to qualify and win! Is your squad going to own Chaos? ========= --hallu

Agreed - very good to see. I still say stats in pracs do more harm than good, and they should be turned off. Pracs should be a time where the results are not permanent, and people can experiment and help other players learn the ropes of league without it reflecting on their record. I spoke with one of the two players who had a name stolen. He had gone into a non-SSC zone, many of which are set up to steal nicks from the unwary. He should be able to get his nick back by the usual method (ssc.subspace.co/lostpass). If you see the "not an SSC zone" warning when entering a zone, don't enter unless you're sure the message is in error (an ASSS server can occasionally give this message erroneously). If you want to check out the zone, create a duplicate profile with the same nick, but a *different* password and *different* chats (yes they can be stolen too). Almost every single player I spoke to expressed support and interest in a Council, however, I don't think any player said "put me on the council" as opposed to "someone from our squad should be on, and we have good candidates..." I think it would be a good thing for the league. I'd like to see more diverse options for play brought back (e.g. make cloak and stealth part of the strategy again by raising the cost differential of running X) - I think more ways to play means there's more strategy involved and more variation in play which makes things more interesting. --hallu

Dueling Zone makes its return! No reps, no greens, 1 mine, no bonuses, no ranks -- just pure, raw skillzzzzzzzzzzzzz Streaks are turned on, and also, of course, stats count toward the reset! Up for at least a week, then we'll return to the normal Chaos. --hallu

Dueling Zone makes its return! No reps, no greens, 1 mine, no bonuses, no ranks -- just pure, raw skillzzzzzzzzzzzzz Streaks are turned on, and also, of course, stats count toward the reset! Up for at least a week, then we'll return to the normal Chaos. --hallu

From News.txt: SVS-98 Chaos!!! Starting this friday we will bring back the vintage SVS-98 Chaos Map and Settings! 30 bty start! Hardly any greens! 6 man freqsize! Downgrades! Plentiful Super, Shields and Warp greens! NO Bonuses! NO ranks. Streaks WILL count. These settings will be in until the reset at the following Wed, when the Halloween map and gfx will come in! Expect plenty of tricks and treats during the rest of October. OOoooo scary. Congrats to develop who repeated as Master of Chaos! --hallu

Thanks for all you've done Polix. I was hoping it was an April Fools prank Come back and visit. Maybe fly a spaceship. And remember, nothing is permanent... --hallu

Today I have rolled out a set of major new revisions to the bots. Please let me know of any anomalies that you see. Giving me the time and day could be helpful. Most of the changes are not externally apparent, however there are some nice new goodies already available. These features are still being developed and refined, and so, as always, feedback and suggestions are welcome. Streaks and sprees are being moved to permanent storage in the DB. This means you be able to look at your own, historic streak record, as well as the best streaks and sprees of the day, month, etc. With this rollout, streaks are completely reset! This means everyone has something new to shoot for! There will be a streak hall of fame in some form to enshrine some of the notable achievements we've seen. Feel free to give some of these commands a try: .allstreaks similar to the old !allstreaks .sprees day best sprees of the day .playerstreaks .streaks help to detail some of the cmds available Please note that going forward only 100+ bty kills will count toward streaks (easier to remember). Also, sitting too long in safe will end a streak. I tried 5 minutes, but that seemed too short, and I've upped it to 10 minutes. This is likely where it will remain. Enjoy! --hallu And don't forget: TONIGHT! Chaos Trivia Night! 10pm ET every Wednesday hosted by hamburlgar Prizes for the knowledgable!

All individual rankings require 75 kills (I had this at 100 kills in the early 2000s and would return to that if the population increases more). To qualify for your squad to be ranked, you only need to get 50 (old VIE standard). hallucination> .leaders flag Chaos-Scores-Bot> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Chaos-Scores-Bot> | Individual Points Leaders: $$$ | Chaos-Scores-Bot> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Chaos-Scores-Bot> | Player Squad Kill Dead Ave Ratg Points Flagpts Ratio D-Ave K-Ave K/Hr AIQ | Chaos-Scores-Bot> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Chaos-Scores-Bot> | 1) Sue E. Side zuma 379 206 127 1040 48103 597609 1.8:1 142 234 12.3 -3 | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | 2) Mr. B-Hole renegade 239 85 104 775 24748 367841 2.8:1 184 246 17.8 -4 | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | 3) Ninespike BlackFlag>> 271 288 115 836 31168 296301 0.9:1 139 182 9.5 -37 | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | 4) necro Thor 200 15 127 908 25403 195496 13.3:1 649 566 25.3 -3 | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | 5) suE e SiDe zuma 251 168 103 758 25785 145361 1.5:1 137 150 18.9 -5 | Chaos-Scores-Bot> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Chaos-Scores-Bot> | To see your own stats, type !PlayerStats | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | The above stats are based on players with a minimum of 30 kills | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | The official Reset Winners will be based on players with a minimum of 75 kills | Chaos-Scores-Bot> | Complete Stats and info at www.svszone.com/index.php?page=ChaosN | Chaos-Scores-Bot> +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Please note bolded section above (same text contained in every .leaders cmd). Here are the stats from last reset: Rank Name Squad K/D Points Flag Pts Rating D Ave K/Hr Ratio* Ave* 1 Axe Demento http://192.168.0.91/playerbanners//Axe%20Demento.bmp renegade 996/1,351 119,926 1,136,887 1,062 119.6 8.3 0.5:1 143.6 2 Zuma zuma 1,415/645 169,452 753,395 1,169 149.8 15.6 1.6:1 139.7 3 Druid Monk http://192.168.0.91/playerbanners//Druid%20Monk.bmp Sacred Geometry 513/80 54,734 412,517 964 333.1 17.5 4.2:1 128.2 4 Mr. B-Hole renegade 365/211 44,033 396,014 980 153.1 13.9 1.3:1 138.0 5 Mog http://192.168.0.91/playerbanners//Mog.bmp Moogle 32/5 3,072 373,686 253 172.6 8.2 4.6:1 108.3 6 r http://192.168.0.91/playerbanners//r.bmp Thor 721/677 88,104 256,966 1,078 104.6 21.4 0.8:1 137.9 I know that from a flagging standpoint the number of kills doesn't make complete sense, but I'd like to see players participating in the zone to a minimal extent in order to make the Reset Winners list. --hallu

We'll have none of that in here! Whatever were you thinking? --hallu

It's likely a false positive from AVG: http://www.avgforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1281 other AVG users are getting the same warning --hallu

Chaos Zone has hosted an aswz arena for quite a while now -- ?go aswz Let me or Polix know of any probs with it. --hallu P.S. don't forget regular Warzone every Sunday at 5pm ET -- ?go 0warzone

1) It's harrassment of a player, and it's not cool. Stabby has a history of this exact thing and will be dealt with. 2) FYI, the sound spamming/lag exploit has been an issue in 4v4 league forever, and the 'fix' they have had there for the last 12+ yrs is to do exactly what Polix said -- turn off Wave Messages. It would be nice if ?ignore worked for this, but it doesn't. If you're "popular" enough to draw this kind of attention, turn off Waves. I did when I played league matches. 3) He's not spamming the zone. He's spamming you (Ninespike), personally. Perhaps you should reflect on your recent behavior in the zone as to reasons why he might have been inspired to pick you out and spam you. --hallu

Currently, 4 man freqs don't kick in until 19 pilots, 5 man at 29, so it's not much of a factor. --hallu

Yes, possible but unreliable. Sometimes you retain your bty; other times not. The exact algorithm that governs this is not publicly known (i.e. Priit and no one else knows it). It appears it is a server side mechanism -- you can close the client, and reopen it, and retain your bty (under some set of circumstances). My speculation has been that the server has a queue of retained btys -- if enough people retain their bty while you're logged out, you get pushed off the end of the queue (and start fresh the next time). Alternatively, it could be stored in the registry but that would open the door for high bty exploits, so is extremely unlikely. Right now it looks like longer safe zone time will be coming back in the future. The feedback here and in the zone is clearly in support of it. If you have valid reasons against it (or for it), this is the place to make your points and discuss it. --hallu

Revisiting the safe zone time after the 9 hour experiment. Please vote, and state your thoughts below. I've not put in poll choices for "no safe zones" because Chaos has always had safe zones and lame safe zone play (like J12), and that's not going away. Also when safe zone time was 5 minutes, rather than forcing people back on the field to play as those advocating that short a time had hoped, the targets simply went to spec or left, yielding a lower population. So I've not included that choice either because we've tried it and it didn't work well for anyone. --15 mins The Retail Release SVS (RR-SVS) setting. My opinion: Something of a balance between "taking a break" and "still playing the game" in that hunters could wait out the 15 minutes. --45 mins Allows enough time to grab a quick meal. Requested by many people, and when it was put in the feedback was very positive. Did it increase zone population? Not much, but it did not decrease it. --9 hours Requested with the speculation that it would lead to higher btys which would lead to higher population. Extraordinarily high btys can bring people into the zone to hunt, but they can also skew the Ave and Rating competition through a small number of kills; so it's not all positive. Enough time to go to work or sleep and come back. To me, there is little difference between 45 mins and 9 hours in terms of game play. Both are ridiculously long periods of time for a real time game; the action comes to a halt longer than any player is willing to actively wait in either case. Did it increase population? Not significantly. Decrease? No. Feedback has been quite positive, with several people changing their minds over the course of the reset from "don't like" to "like." Downsides of 9 hr safe time (or any long safe time): First, any exploit possible with a 9 hr safe time is also possible with a 45 min one (or 15 mins for that matter), it's just the effort involved in executing it. --Streak exploits. Sit in safe with the streak and wait for the zone to get very quiet, then bring in a friend and kill them over and over with no one else around. This is not new, really, and would be dealt with the same ways that are used to keep the integrity of Streaks and of the Reset Winners competition (disqualification, etc.). --Antiwarp in safe for hours. People speculated at the beginning that this would happen. I thought only occasionally would someone accidentally leave aw on. No one could possibly be a big enough troll to intentionally do this for more than a short period of time (meaning that 3 months from now, no one would be sitting in safe every day to annoy people). Right? Well Mr. Explosion decided to try and be that very troll himself, in order prove that being a troll was possible and would be bad. BAD! Or something. Only a couple of players were upset by his action. The vast majority of people had no problem with him making it clear that he's a troll. There are ways to deal with this (and all trolls), so I don't consider this an issue if we keep long safe times. --Holding the streak. We saw Gadianton hold the streak an entire day sitting in safe. This is the only real downside I see to long safe times -- not so much that the a personal Streak can be held that long (Gad did nothing wrong here), but that it prevents the Streak from being part of the normal, active conversation during play. If someone is sitting in safe, not playing, there are no announcements of who has the Streak, which is a goal for some of the players. The Streak was conceived as a continuous playing effort, during 15 min safe times, so short breaks were possible. There are solutions for this including going to safe for any length of time ending a streak; or a streak ending after sitting in safe for X amt of time. I'm not fond of these solutions. This still needs consideration. As always in Chaos, with the various goals that different players have, there will be a variety of opinions Thoughts? --hallu

Slightly enhanced version of what's in news.txt: --Map with new castle design is in! This castle is more like the original battle drome castle plus it is even better for base fighting play. Thanks to all those that brainstormed ideas, especially wobit, Axe Demento, and Capt. ARGH! Please give feedback here: http://www.subspace....he-hallucitron/ --JACKPOT Reward formula has changed! Previously, every freq member would get the full reward, now it is effectively split between them: rewardPoints * freqsize / numberOfTeamMembers --Master of Chaos was won by Static Burn when, 17 minutes into the final round, he greened shields, and JOCKER charged. Congrats! --Master of Chaos rule change going forward: During the first minute of the final round, all greens will disappear. This keeps the event true to Chaos Dueling which often occurs at the edge of the map, where there are no greens. It will also discourage endless running and greening during the final round. --Tuesday Feb 7th saw the highest Chaos population at any time since early 2009. We hit 39 players, and had >30 playing for about an hour around 10pm ET. Many heavy turrets, hunt freqs, but still no squads swarming/owning specific map areas. In any event -- good stuff! --hallu

As a follow up, this weekend saw the highest Chaos populations for January going several years back -- max of 34 last night w/multiple turrets, hunt freqs etc. Over the weekend, the pop hit the mid 20s a bunch of times (more frequently than usual I think). I speculate that this is partially due to the successful DZ event and the energy it created. --hallu

And let me add this -- even though the population wasn't much different than typical, I think that many of the players were more excited than usual due to having DZ settings and map live again, but also just because of change/something different. I felt like things were a little more lively over the weekend, as has been the case with each of the 'guest appearances' by other SVS settings/map. Good stuff imo. What do you think? --hallu

Since Chaos-Bot had to be down (so dynamic freqsizes, greens, etc weren't goofing up the DZ settings), I don't have the precise population stats I usually have. Plutorus and I were taking notes, and what I saw was a peak of about 26-28 people on Saturday night which was pretty good. Last night (Tuesday) we had 26, which is good for a Tues, so that could be the carryover effect we hope to get from events to regular Chaos play. Overall, I'd say that population was consistently a little higher than average during the time it was in, but that is the expectation when settings are in for a short time and they are old favorite settings -- DZ has certainly been one of the most requested old SVS settings to make an appearance. And true to that, there were a lot of happy vets and a number of names we hadn't seen for a while Historically though, it was close to the average, decent weekend for the zone during the school year (summer is lower population, plus the population fluctuates quite a bit anyway) -- e.g. overall the week of Nov 30th was quite similar with a peak pop of 26. I'm glad people enjoyed it, and that hopefully we'll get more of those less frequent vistors stopping in during regular Chaos play. DZ has always available in ?go dz so anytime people would like, get a dueling thing going there Chaos of course has Speed at any players request 24/7. And Jackpot also runs continuously -- but _not_ with the extremely difficult JP settings (e.g. 0 bty start). We did that a long time ago to try and keep these classic SVS games alive and active in some form. --hallu

+1 --hallu

Yes, possible... however, echoing what Nude said, negative, punitive, special powers just drive the targets from the zone... and the targets end up being a very few number of people, if you know what I mean In an event -- possible. In Chaos, not so hot... I like all these impossible ideas! Except nrg deplete for everyone is possible, but would have to be an event (just not based on a green). Yes... some are in the works (like when someone rabbits)... done. More like this plz. --hallu

Good work guys! I like it when ppl take initiative and make stuff happen! --hallu

Yes, I think this is a good idea My post from the Events Staff forum: Unfortunately, the logistics are a bit complex to implement (code must be migrated from chaos-bot to scores-bot for one thing), but it remains towards the top of my "list" -- things not included in the above list are: --bonuses on/off (including earning of bonuses) --dynamic freqsizes on/off --dynamic greens on/off --dynamic flags on/off --ranks on/off etc. Map changes are more disruptive than settings changes in general (due to the recycle of the zone if nothing else). These types of changes, even when temporary, elicit a wild variety of "opinions" shall we say Events can be a great tool to bring more people into the zone, but it's not a slapdash affair. I'll talk to you in the zone mr silly about that. I've long had an ad in the .staff command: Help Wanted: Graphics Designer, Events Design, Events Hosting, Zone Promotion, Marketing -- all of which go into making great new events that will draw ppl in. It's a great opportunity for creative folk to experiment, and help Chaos and SVS. I put out the call again for applicants to these positions. More ideas/specifics? --hallu

Yes, main zone (announcements like this are always for Chaos -- an event should be labeled as such). Thx for pointing out the inconsistency in the moc settings -- I've changed it to zero delay on alt-tab like Chaos. Almost all settings in MoC arena should match Chaos. Let me think about !king... maybe a reward of some kind for some other achievement. --hallu